Beliefs, Needs and Wishes vs. Reality as it Exists

Periodically, I find myself pondering this highly polarized world in which we live, in which it seems like people end up at each other's throats at the slightest sign that the other person isn't 100% in alignment.

I find it both distressing... and a little scary.

Many many years ago when I was in round number one of therapy, I had a discussion with my therapist about the challenges of dealing with reality as you are experiencing it and the "reality" other people want to impose on you, for whatever reasons they may have.

I suppose it's one thing if it's something that happens occasionally, quite another if it is something you're constantly subjected to.

Let me offer an example: I was more or less constantly subjected to being told by my mother "how I felt about things," so as to bring my feelings into alignment with what she wanted reality to be. How I actually felt about things were only true to the degree that they were in accordance with what my mother felt about things.

In adult life — many years later — I frequently struggled with uncertainty, and some fear of owning my own feelings. After all — even if I genuinely felt something — who was to say that some other person wouldn't come along and tell me that what I thought I was feeling was "nonsense," and instead to accept that "this was my real feeling?"

Of course, with maturity and the passing of the years I have come to understand that when people want to "adjust" how you feel about something so as to fit their needs it more often is a statement about them, rather than a statement about you.

That said, I'm also well aware that I don't exactly fit the norm or the typical personality profile for people out there, so it is only to be expected that I would perhaps make a few people feel uncomfortable because they can't predict exactly what I'm going to say or do next.

Which brings me to the point of how interesting it is that people so often defend on being able to control what other people say and do as a means to keeping their own environment safe. Which also means that they typically can't allow people to simply be themselves.

I can't help but think that it's one of the reasons why there are so many unhappy relationships out there.

We join up with somebody in the hopes that they will be something that "fits us" in a specific way and we leave no room for them to develop and be the person that they actually are. We fear that their difference from how we perceive them to be is somehow the deal breaker, where in reality is merely an invitation to truly get close to somebody and understand what they are about and meeting them where they are rather than forcing them to meet you where you are.

Bringing the bunny back around, I can't help but think that it is this strange kind of fear-based rigidity that is causing so much strife and conflict in our society.

My memory goes back to my University days, and to the four deeply Christian Southern Baptist boys who lived in the apartment across the way from me. It was almost as if they were haveing a "cognitive break" at the idea that I could actually be a decent and kind human being even though I was neither Baptist, nor religious in any way.

If I wasn't one of them, I was supposed to be evil!

To their credit, they allowed their tangible experience to merge with their rigid belief system, and we were good friends while being neighbors... even though they did regularly try to make me "see the light."

But we do live in a world where many people seem trapped in the paradigm that if they want something to be true, then is is true... no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented.

As an old Texas saying goes: "Don't confuse me with the FACTS when my mind is already made up!"

It's a scary world!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great rest of your week!

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Created at 2025.06.30 23:50 PDT
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